What books do you love that aren’t strictly in the canon? Here is my list of three neglected “older” books and one new novel longlisted for the Booker Prize. 

1. The Middle Age of Mrs. Eliot, by Angus Wilson.  This neglected novel won the Tait Black Memorial Prize in 1958.  You can find a copy online, but I defy you to find it in a bookstore.

Meg Eliot is a bossy, charming middle-aged woman who dominates committees,  hosts parties to boost her husband’s career, and organizes a vacation with and for her overworked husband.

And then it happens.  During a layover in a third-world country, her husband is shot and killed at an airport.  Suddenly she is is penniless, unemployable, and angry at her husband’s quixotic act. (He threw himself in front of a man to save him from an assassination attempt.) She enrolls in secretarial school, but it will be months before she graduates.  During this period of living in shabby rooms and trying to find an affordable home, she tries living, separately, with two of her impecunious friends, and alienates them, because she runs everything like a committee.

Meg Eliot is one of my favorite fictional characters. Wilson’s witty dialogue, brilliant prose, and insight into her character makes this a joy to read. Mrs. Eliot seems to change, but does she really?

The best novel I’ve read this year.

2. Audition, by Katie Kitamura. Shortlisted for the Booker Prize, this graceful novel is the most elegant I’ve read this year.  The prose is spare, lyrical, precise, and even icy. The narrator is an actress, trying to get her part right in rehearsals. Other characters demand her attention: a young man who may or may not be her son, and a husband who is unfaithful in a shocking betrayal. It’s a complex novel. What is real and what not?

3.  The Corner That Held Them, by Sylvia Townsend Warner. Do you like nun novels?  This is much better than Rumer Godden’s nun novels, Black Narcissus and In This House of Brede. Set in the Middle Ages, the novel charts the lives of generations of nuns: they endure the Plague, survive wars and pettily fight over politics. The question is often: who will be the next Mother Superior? Beautifully-written, and perhaps an inspiration for Muriel Spark’s The Abbess of Crewe.

4.  Cecilia, by Fanny Burney.  This month I finished this delightful 18th century novel, from which Jane Austen borrowed the phrase “Pride and Prejudice.” Cecilia, an heiress, struggles for independence, control of her money, and works to deflect unwanted suitors. It’s a great novel, though slightly less great when the marriage plot kicks in. Still, it’s a classic I love and recommend.

And if you can think of any stunning neglected novels, I’d like to add them to my list!